


for all the light that i shut out

by AtlantisRises



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley yearns, Drunkenness, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Pre-Relationship, the 14th century and crowley's long nap, theological angst with a happy ending, to relationship-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 02:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19416292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlantisRises/pseuds/AtlantisRises
Summary: Sometimes he dreams the word ineffable and feels himself slot into it like the keystone in an arch. Sometimes he dreams of wooden joints and string tied to his limbs, and wakes up paralyzed and staring at the ceiling.*********OR: Crowley thinks about forgiveness, ineffability, and his legs





	1. drunk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life“ -Genesis 3:14_

Crowley has legs.

They’re quite long, almost perfectly human, and currently sprawled out on a bench in the corner of a tiny bar somewhere on the coast of Catalonia, while their owner and his hereditary enemy get piss drunk. 

“‘M not supposed to, angel,” he says for the third or fourth time. He wiggles his whole body a bit, to make the point. “ _ Go on thy belly an’ eat the dust _ , tha’s what She said, you were there. In the. In the whatsit. Garden.”

Aziraphale hums. “It was raining,” he says. He’s drunk enough that his perfect posture has started to list ever so slightly to the left. 

“Yes!” says Crowley. He kicks one foot up and slumps further back against the wall. “‘Zactly. Rain and dust, that’s mud. No good, that. Had to stand up. Wasn’t supposed to.” 

The angel hums again, and looks at the legs. He looks like he’s thinking very hard about the legs. 

“Thing is,” says Crowley. “Thing is, I didn’t get smited. Smoten. Smote?”

“Smitten,” says Aziraphale, still looking at the legs.

“Think that’s a different thing,” says Crowley. Something at the back of his head that’s still just a little bit sober is watching Aziraphale watch him, and getting a bit warm. Nice, that. He’s usually quite cold. Anyway. “Anyway.”

“Anyway?”

“‘M just. Not supposed to have legs, am I? After the Garden. S’pose to just, just wiggle around. Wiggle.” He wiggles. Then he lifts one foot off the bench again and kicks it around and slips a little further down the wall. “Still got em though. Not struck dead.”

“I’m sure,” says Aziraphale, who is now pouring himself another glass of red and only getting a few drops of it on the table, “that She has, you know. Reasons.”

“Or! Or she doesn’ care,” says Crowley, who is now closer to lying on his back than sitting on the bench.

“My dear boy!” says Aziraphale, drawing himself up straight.

“Only saying,” says Crowley into the wine glass perched on his chest. “She made a whole big deal of it, ‘s in the scriptures an’ everything, “ _ a _ _ nd dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life _ !”  An’ now nothing! Either She’s not watching, or She doesn’ care. 

“Crowley,” says Aziraphale. Over the edge of the table Crowley can see his eyebrows drawing together the way they do when he’s trying to be stern and trying not to be uncertain. 

He wants to poke the spot between them, where the skin of Aziraphale’s forehead puckers up. He wants to say  _ think about it, really think.  _ He wants to say  _ I know you have questions, I know it, I know you.  _

Instead he says “Angel….”

And Aziraphale says “I’m sure there’s a reason, my dear.”

And Crowley says “Oh no, don’t you….”

And Aziraphale says “It isn’t ours to know. It’s ineffable.” And Crowley sinks all the way down onto his back, and curls his legs together, and feels the warm place inside him get cold again. 


	2. tired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley, blankets, and ineffability

_ At least  _ Crowley thinks later, curled up under every blanket available in the most expensive inn in town,  _ at least he didn’t say the F word.  _

Because they’ve had this conversation before, once or twice, over the centuries. Hard not to repeat topics, when you and your favorite conversational partner don’t age and don’t forget. 

The last time they’d talked about the legs, several decades ago, Aziraphale had only been a little drunk, and he’d been soft and happy and warm after a particularly good dinner at a riverfront restaurant in the south of France, and he’d smiled a tentative, soft smile and said very slowly, “what if...” 

Crowely shakes his head at the memory, and squashes his face into the mattress. 

“What if,” Aziraphale had said, “what if it means She’s forgiven you, just a little bit.”

Crowley had left. He isn’t particularly proud of it, but it was that or say a lot of things that he didn’t know how to say, not without ruining all of the softness of the night. 

Because the thing is, he’s not forgiven--certainly not Forgiven--he can’t be, because he’s still  _ cold _ . He’s been cold since Eden, since the Fall, since all of the Grace was ripped out of him and his wings burned black. When the Flood came it soaked into him so deep he didn’t stop shaking for a decade, and even here in Spain, fifteen and a half centuries later, the mildest winter winds have him curled up under five layers of blankets.

Aziraphale is  _ warm _ . It’s more than the mammal-warmth of humans; it radiates from him like lantern light. All Crowley wants--all he’s wanted for centuries, he’s still drunk enough to admit this to himself--is to press up into that warmth and never leave. He’s not forgiven. He doesn’t  _ want  _ to be forgiven. He just wants to be warm. 

_ No,  _ thinks Crowley, pulling his knees up to his stomach.  _ It isn’t forgiveness. It’s maybe...It’s more like… _

He wonders, sometimes--times like this--when he’s low and cold and thinking about the taste of dust, if it might be something like an apology. 

Sometimes he dreams the word  _ ineffable _ and feels himself slot into it like the keystone in an arch. Sometimes he dreams of wooden joints and string tied to his limbs, and wakes up paralyzed and staring at the ceiling. 

Sometimes he sits with his back to a wall and feels horribly, horribly Known. 

He’s still the serpent, still cold-blooded, still exiled from the Garden, but he can walk on two legs. He’s Fallen, but he is not in Hell; he is allowed the sunrise, every day, and wine and small sins and humanity and, sometimes, a little bit of cast-off angelic warmth.

Why? 

Maybe it’s just luck and bureaucracy; maybe it’s just that he’s good at his job and Hell doesn’t particularly want to deal with him hanging around the office.

Maybe it really is indifference. Maybe She doesn’t care about him. Maybe She doesn’t care about any of it.

Or maybe it’s a bit of fruit, the taste of something sweet, a consolation prize while he’s being shuffled around an ineffable game board.

Crowley pulls at the bottom-most blanket and gathers it into a tight ball in his arms so that he can curl around it, shivering. Either way, he’s cold. Either way he’s a Fallen thing, a slit-pupiled thing, a thing cracked open and emptied of Grace and warmth. 

_ Either way _ he thinks, and turns on his belly. Drunk and boneless, he sleeps. 

He doesn’t wake until the dawn of the fifteenth century.


	3. warm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a bus ride

Centuries and centuries pass, and the world doesn’t end.

Crowley finds himself at a bus stop, in the dark, with Aziraphale beside him. They pass a bottle of wine back and forth, and the warmth of the angel’s mouth lingers just so in the glass. Crowley presses his lips to it and takes a long, long swig.

“Angel,” he says when he passes the bottle back.  _ Thank God or---or somebody,  _ he wants to say.  _ I’m never going to forget that fire _ , he wants to say.  _ I love you, I love you, I love you. _

And because he can’t say that, he says the other thing: “what if the Almighty planned it like this, all along?” 

Aziraphale shrugs and takes a drink. “Could have,” he says, easy as anything. “I wouldn’t put it past Her.” 

Then a delivery man comes, and Crowley doesn’t answer.

He thinks about it, though, on the bus that isn’t going to Oxford. 

Aziraphale puts one hand on his knee, and Crowley covers it with his hand, and the warmth that surges up through his veins makes the thought hurt less.

_ A pawn, then. The fall guy.  _ He snorts at that, and Aziraphale squeezes his knee in silent response. 

It’s still not a nice thought. If it’s true--if he was part of the whole Ineffable Plan after all--what does it mean that he Fell? What does it mean that he burned, that he screamed, that as soon as the flames went out he was cold through every inch of his being? 

Was he a tool to be used in the Garden? Was he allowed his legs and then...what? Set aside for later?

The bus shudders over a bump in the road and Aziraphale makes a small, sleepy noise beside him. 

_ Later,  _ Crowley thinks,  _ has come and gone. _

Aziraphale turns his hand over, slots their fingers together, and squeezes. 

The night passes by outside the window. Trees shudder in the faint breeze, lit in flashes by headlights while beyond them, around them, people sleep.

Crowley burned but then, Aziraphale didn’t. The Earth didn’t. He still remembers the taste of dust and it’s bitter on his tongue, but there’s good wine sloshing in his belly and Aziraphale is sinking slowly into sleep, listing to the right until his whole body is pressed up against Crowley’s side. 

Crowley carefully takes back his hand, shifts his wrist and his elbow and his shoulder as slow and smooth as he can, and gently, gently, stretches his arm out and curls it around Aziraphale’s shoulders. The angel presses even closer. 

He’s warm. He’s so warm. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is called "apologies to the serpent" in my drafts and it's a tonal mess oops. 
> 
> I'm not religious but uhhh. What about. The theological implications of a kooky odd-couple rom-com with Doctor Who in it?
> 
> Title from "I'll Be Good" by Jaymes Young, which I've had stuck in my head since I first heard it on someone's Crowley playlist on Spotify. Unfortunately, I've forgotten which playlist
> 
> Talk to me about ineffability in the comments


End file.
